I would say that you were selected for a reason. They certainly know about your first semester grades and decided to interview you anyway. They wouldn't waste their time talking to you if they thought you weren't a viable candidate. Don't worry too much about this and don't be too apologetic about it. At the end of the day, there are many reasons why your first semester grades might not reflect your true potential as an attorney. Try to think about skills you have that aren't reflected in those grades and be ready to talk about them if the topic is brought up during the interview.

In any event, the best you can do is try to let go of your nervousness and do the best you can. I know this is way easier said than done. Just remember: you have a shot. They know about your grades. Use the interview to show them all the skills you have that they don't see on paper. Some of these skills are at least as important, in the business world, as those that are visible on paper.

Also, don't get the idea that any one interview is make-or-brake in terms of you career. You will get other interviews. Each interview is practice. If you get hired from your first interview, great. If not, you'll be better prepared for the next one.

I work for a firm doing IP stuff and I can say that it's true for us. That is, once we have a bunch of candidates on the short list they are usually not selected according to their grades. The only time this happens is when one clearly stands out by, say, having an absolutely perfect academic record. Even having a perfect academic record, though, isn't really considered to be as important as coming off well in person.

That said, there is a GPA cutoff to be on any short-list... so the differences in GPA between shortlist candidates are, by definition, not huge.

As Burning Sands points out, it's also important to define what one means by "biglaw." From my perspective, "biglaw" should refer both to the size of the firm as well as what it charges for its services. I'm of the mind that firms are likely both to shrink and to become less lucrative as long as the financial industry is suffering. I don't see how either could be sustained if finance does not return to scale it was a couple of years ago... and I don't see that happening any time soon.

I mean, a few decades ago people would've said the same thing about the idea that gargantuan auto companies are not eternal.

Yes, because GM has been replaced by mom and pop auto manufacturers. My point is that the nature of certain practice areas is that they require the resources a large firm can provide. Individual auto companies are certainly not eternal, but the nature of manufacturing cars is that it requires a very large company to do economically.

I'm not saying the Cravath model will exist for evermore. All I'm saying is that as long as there are fortune 500 companies and billion dollar mergers there will be biglaw in some shape or form.

(admittedly limited) auto industry analogies aside, the point I found myself objecting to was the implication that predictions of the death of biglaw are as "absurd" as predictions of the death of capitalism. There are plenty of capitalistic economies that do not have legal firms operating on the scale of US biglaw. In fact, there is no other capitalistic economy (including that of GB) where law firms operate on that scale. Toyota and VW were both mentioned in a different context, but it's worth noting that neither Japan nor Germany has law firms operating on anything approaching the scale of US big law. These are the world's second and third largest economies, respectively.

The concept of "biglaw" as it existed in bush and Clinton eras is not eternal, nor is it any more inherent in a capitalistic economy as are large automotive companies or enormous investment banks. The fact is that the US economy has operated, at various times, without any of these institutions and would likely be able to do so again in the future.

I think the suggestion that this would be impossible is pretty wrong-headed.